Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Social Media News for church and ministry leaders. I’m Natchi Lazarus. This is the show where we bring you 5 important social media news that you need to know for this week, in less than 5 minutes!

1.The first news is about Whatsapp for Business.

Whatsapp for Business, the business edition of WhatsApp, has been around for a year now and to celebrate one year, WhatsApp is adding new features to its web and desktop versions. Features like quick replies, which was available only on the mobile, are now available on the desktop and web version as well. Of course, WhatsApp for Business most people, I think, will use it only on the desktop and WhatsApp recognizes that and they’re adding more features. Which is a good thing. As a ministry, if you’re not using WhatsApp for Business, you should start using it. It’s one of the most powerful tools.

2. The second news item comes from Twitter and Twitter owned Periscope.

Periscope which now allows you to add three other people from the audience onto your live stream, so you can bring them on, when you’re streaming live, You can bring somebody from your audience, you can bring three other people and if somebody else drops, you can replace them. Which is a great way to collaborate when you’re doing live stream, makes it more interesting. More people are talking on screen. So I think this is going to help people who use Periscope a lot.

3. The third news item is about Google’s Data Studio.

Data Studio is a dashboard tool that lets you build dashboards for different metrics. As a leader, you want to see what is working, what is not working on social media, right? And now you can do that with ease. It’s a free tool and it is actually robust. Many experts are comparing it with some of the highly expensive dashboard tools out there. And in many ways it even seems to be better than some of the paid tools. So do check out Google Data Studio. But the news is, they are adding interactivity to their reports. That is what Google announced last week.

4. The fourth news item is also from Google, but this time for Google My Business.

Google My Business adds a feature where you can register using a ‘service location’ instead of an ‘address’ of an office, so if you have a particular type of a nonprofit or a ministry that does not have a fixed location but actually goes around serving people in different areas, then you can register on Google My Business and give your location as the ‘service area’ location. I think it’s a very useful feature for people who are not in a fixed address.

5. The final news item is from Facebook about Facebook Messenger.

We all have been in situations where we have sent out wrong messages or a message by mistake to someone and we wish we could delete it, right? And now you can do that. Facebook Messenger rolls out a feature where you can delete a message for everyone, whether it’s in a group or it is one on one. I think that is a good thing that we all need. Sometimes we just have to erase our past. We all love a ‘delete button’ at some point in our life 🙂 so that’s a good one.

That’s all we have for you this week. I hope this was useful.

Thank you for joining me. Have a wonderful week.

Do leave your comments, questions, feedback and reviews. I will see you next week!

Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches and Ministries. You can subscribe to Natchi’s email newsletter by clicking here.